Уильям Моэм - The Narrow Corner

“It was strong wine for a young head that our Mr. Frith gave you to drink,” murmured the doctor.

“It intoxicated me,” smiled Erik, “but that intoxication causes no headache in the morning.”

The doctor did not reply. He was inclined to think that its effects, more lasting, might be a great deal more pernicious. Erik took a sip of whisky.

“I was brought up a Lutheran, but when I went to the university I became an atheist. It was the fashion, and I was very young. I just shrugged my shoulders when Frith began to talk to me of Brahma. Oh, we’ve spent hours sitting on the verandah, up at the plantation, Frith, his wife Catherine and me. He’d talk. She never said much, but she listened, looking at him with adoring eyes, and he and I would argue. It was all vague and difficult to understand, but you know, he was very persuasive, and what he believed had a sort of grandeur and beauty; it seemed to fit in with the tropical, moonlit nights and the distant stars and the murmur of the sea. I’ve often wondered if there isn’t something in it. And if you know what I mean, it fits in too with Wagner and Shakespeare’s plays and those lyrics of Camoens. Sometimes I’ve grown impatient and said to myself, the man’s an empty windbag. You see, it bothered me that he should drink more than was good for him, and be so fond of his food, and when there was a job of work to do always have an excuse for not doing it. But Catherine believed in him. She was no fool. If he’d been a fake she couldn’t have lived with him for twenty years and not found it out. It was funny that he should be so gross and yet be capable of such lofty thoughts. I’ve heard him say things that I shall never forget. Sometimes he could soar into mystical regions of the spirit—d’you know what I mean?—when you couldn’t follow him, but just watched dizzily from the ground and yet were filled with rapture. And you know, he could do surprising things. That day that old Swan tore up his manuscript, a year’s work, two whole cantos of ‘The Lusiads,’ when they saw what had happened Catherine burst out crying, but he just sighed and went out for a walk. When he came in he brought the old man, delighted with his mischief, but a little scared all the same, a bottle of rum. It’s true he’d bought it with Swan’s money, but that doesn’t matter. ‘Never mind, old man,’ he said, ‘you’ve only torn up a few dozen sheets of paper; they were merely an illusion and it would be foolish to give them a second thought; the reality remains, for the reality is indestructible.’ And next day he set to work to do it all over again.”

“He said he was going to give me some passages to read,” said Dr. Saunders. “I suppose he forgot.”

“He’ll remember,” said Erik, with a smile in which there was a good–natured grimness.

Dr. Saunders liked him. The Dane was genuine, at all events; an idealist, of course, but his idealism was tempered with humour. He gave you the impression that his strength of character was greater even than the strength of his mighty frame. Perhaps he was not very clever, but he was immensely reliable, and the charm of his simple, honest nature pleasantly complemented the charm of his ungainly person. It occurred to the doctor that a woman might very well fall deeply in love with him and his next remark was not entirely void of guile.

“And that girl we saw, is that the only child they had?”

“Catherine was a widow when Frith married her. She had a son by her first husband, and a son by Frith, too, but they both died when Louise was a child.”

“And has she looked after everything since her mother’s death?”

“Yes.”

“She’s very young.”

“Eighteen. She was only a kid when I first came to the island. They sent her to the missionary school here, and then her mother thought she ought to go to Auckland. But when Catherine fell ill they sent for her. It’s funny what a year’ll do for girls; when she went away she was a child who used to sit on my knee, and when she came back she was a young woman.” He gave the doctor his small, diffident smile. “I’ll tell you in confidence that we’re engaged.”

“Oh?”

“Not officially, so I’d sooner you didn’t mention it. Old Swan’s willing enough, but her father says she’s too young. I suppose she is, but that’s not his real reason for objecting. I’m afraid he doesn’t think me good enough. He’s got an idea that one of these days some rich English lord will come along in his yacht and fall madly in love with her. The nearest approach so far is young Fred in a pearling lugger.”

He chuckled.

“I don’t mind waiting. I know she’s young. That’s why I didn’t ask her to marry me before. You see, it took me some time to get it into my head that she wasn’t a little girl any more. When you love anyone like I love Louise a few months, a year or two—well, they don’t matter. We’ve got all life before us. It won’t be quite the same when we’re married. I know it’s going to be perfect happiness, but we shall have it, we shan’t be looking forward to it any more. We’ve got something now that we shall lose. D’you think that’s stupid?”

“No.”

“Of course, you’ve only just seen her, you don’t know her. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Very.”

“Well, her beauty’s the least of her qualities. She’s got a head on her shoulders, she’s got the same practical spirit that her mother had. It makes me laugh sometimes to see this lovely child—after all, she is hardly more than a kid—manage the labour on the estate with so much common–sense. The Malays know it’s useless to try any tricks with her. Of course, having lived practically all her life here, she has all sorts of knowledge in her bones. It’s amazing how shrewd she is. And the tact she shows with those two men, her grandfather and Frith. She knows them inside out; she knows all their faults, but she doesn’t mind them; she’s awfully fond of them, of course, and she takes them as they are, as though they were just like everybody else. I’ve never seen her even impatient with either of them. And you know, one wants one’s patience when old Swan rambles on with some story you’ve heard fifty times already.”

“I guessed that it was she who made things run smooth.”

“I suppose one would. But what one wouldn’t guess is that her beauty, and her cleverness, and the goodness of her heart mask a spirit of the most subtle and exquisite delicacy. Mask isn’t the right word. Mask suggests disguise and disguise suggests deceit. Louise doesn’t know what disguise and deceit mean. She is beautiful, and she is kind, and she is clever; all that’s she; but there’s someone else there too, a sort of illusive spirit that somehow I think no one but her mother who is dead and I have ever suspected. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like a wraith within the body; it’s like a soul within the spirit, if you can imagine it; it’s like the essential flame of the individual of which all the qualities that the world sees are only emanations.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows. It seemed to him that Erik Christessen was getting a bit out of his depth. Still, he listened to him without displeasure. He was very much in love and Dr. Saunders had a half cynical tenderness for young things in that condition.

“Have you ever read Hans Andersen’s ‘Little Mermaid’?” asked Erik.

“A hundred years ago.”

“That lovely flame–like spirit not my eyes but my soul has felt in Louise seems to me just like that little mermaid. It’s not quite at home in the haunts of men. It has always a vague nostalgia for the sea. It’s not quite human; she’s so sweet, she’s so gentle, she’s so tender, and yet there is a sort of aloofness in her that keeps you at a distance. It seems to me very rare and beautiful. I’m not jealous of it. I’m not afraid of it. It’s a priceless possession and I love her so much that I almost regret that she cannot always keep it. I feel that she will lose it when she becomes a wife and a mother, and whatever beauty of soul she has then it will be different. It’s something apart and independent. It’s the self which is part of the universal self; perhaps we’ve all got it; but what is so wonderful in her is that it’s almost sensible, and you feel that if only your eyes were a little more piercing you could see it plain. I’m so ashamed that I shall not go to her as pure as she will come to me.”